Monday, June 20, 2016

Philosopher errors about free will

I listened to some dopey philosophers discuss free will, and they agreed on several absurd points.

Science has proved that the world is deterministic.

No, our leading scientific theories are not deterministic. Quantum mechanics is the most fundamental, and it is not deterministic at all. The most deterministic theory is supposed to be Newtonian mechanics, but it is not deterministic as it is usually applied.

I don't know how anyone can believe anything so silly. Nearly all of science, from astrophysics to social science, uses models that are partially deterministic and partially stochastic. Pure determinism is not used or believed anywhere.

Random means all possibilities are equally likely.

No. Coin tosses are supposed to have this property, but anything more complicated usually does not. If you allow the possibility of the coin landing on it edge, the edge is not equally likely.

Randomness means no one has any control over outcomes.

No, it means nothing of the kind. Often the randomness is a scientific paper is controlled by a pseudorandom number generator. While those numbers look random compared to the other data, they are determined by a formula.

This is the sort of thing that only a foolish philosopher would say. Free will is self-evident. And yet they claim that it does not exist based on some supposed dichotomy between two other concepts that they never adequately define.

They might define randomness as anything that is not determined. Then they try to draw some grand philosophical consequence from that dichotomy. No, you cannot prove something nontrivial just by giving a definition.

Roger's sounding like a bully again. "Dopey" philosophers. "Foolish" philosophers. What the hell good is 2AFC (Two Alternatives, Forced Choice) even as a first-order approximizing tool if bullies laugh that it doesn't get a Prix Nobel? 2AFC is introduction of a dichotomy, which may be a false one. Except you wouldn't introduce it if you know it's false. More likely, you're unsure if it's true or false and hence you tentatively assume it's true and force choice.

Roger's sounding like a bully again. "Dopey" philosophers. "Foolish" philosophers. What the hell good is 2AFC (Two Alternatives, Forced Choice) even as a first-order approximizing tool if bullies laugh that it doesn't get a Prix Nobel? 2AFC is introduction of a dichotomy, which may be a false one. Except you wouldn't introduce it if you know it's false. More likely, you're unsure if it's true or false and hence you tentatively assume it's true and force choice.